Lewis Denbyhttps://lewisdenby.wordpress.com
Gamesbloke. Personal blog.
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1 http://wordpress.com/https://s0.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngLewis Denbyhttps://lewisdenby.wordpress.com
Robin Williams, depression, language, Telegraph articles and Stephen Fryhttps://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/robin-williams-depression-language-telegraph-articles-and-stephen-fry/
https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/robin-williams-depression-language-telegraph-articles-and-stephen-fry/#respondTue, 12 Aug 2014 17:24:59 +0000http://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/?p=1041Today is another day on which a celebrity reminds us all that depression is a genuinely life-threatening disease. Robin Williams’ apparent suicide has shocked the world. Of course it has, just as any premature death ought to. But as with many deaths from suicide or related to addiction or general psychological issues, particularly with celebrities, there’s a minority of people who don’t quite understand. “What did he have to be depressed about?” people ask. “He had money, fame, respect… what’s not to love about life if you’re Robin Williams?”

It always bears repeating: depression is not a selective illness. There are compounding factors, of course: poverty, childhood trauma etc. But depression can come from anywhere and attack anyone. It’s important that people understand this, if the ongoing stigma is to subside.

Still, both Rhodes’ column and Fry’s comments regarding it left me a little uncomfortable. It’s not that the core message is troublesome. Far from it. The more times we can stand on a podium and remind people to talk about depression, to learn about it, to educate themselves and support those who are suffering from it, the better. In its introduction, though, Rhodes’ piece quite explicitly draws a distinction between severe and mild forms of depression, and his use of language carries a nasty undertone of sneering at those whose problems aren’t “real”.

Let’s be absolutely clear about something: nobody’s problems are trivial. Ever. If problems become trivial, they’re not problems; they’re minor inconveniences. It’s the reason I always found it baffling to see some people with self-harm problems berate others for “only doing it as a cry for help.” (Have you actually stopped to consider that phrase? “A cry for help”? A cry for help – as if someone crying for help is somehow worthy of sneers and derision, instead of – y’know – help.) It’s the reason that “well, some people are starving in Africa” is never an appropriate response to anything, and why the “first world problems” meme continues to irk me. And, placed in the context of a real, life-destroying illness, this attitude takes on a particularly scary face.

It’s scary because depression grows. If left unchecked, it bubbles and simmers inside you, barely noticeable at first, then a little more noticeable, before eventually you realise it’s taken over everything. You realise that the thing you loved doing a year ago now seems miserable to you, and you half-recall finding it mildly tedious six months back. You note that the constant reminders to yourself, that it will seem better after a good night’s sleep, aren’t something you can cling onto all that well when they never turn out to be true. Slowly, but at the same time very suddenly, you realise it’s sucked the life out of you.

Temporary illnesses are only ever temporary once they’ve stopped. Until then they’re constant, and it can’t always be easy to predict which way things will go. Indeed, depression itself can be temporary. Generally speaking, a period of two weeks of symptoms that match, with no obvious or typical trigger, is enough for it to be considered an episode of depression. For some people, that two weeks is the only time they’ll ever struggle with it. For others, it will be years, perhaps decades, of continual pain and suffering. For many of us it’s somewhere in the middle: a series of shorter episodes, a few days or weeks at a time, thankfully broken up by happier times. For those of us in the latter position, it’s something we learn to live with, and to not let consume us, but make no mistake: while we thank our lucky stars our situation isn’t worse, we still consider it a very “real” thing to live with.

Well-intentioned or not, I struggle to not be offended by Rhodes’ use of language. It “seems” that a lot of people are depressed, but “of course” they’re not. They’re just “claiming” to be depressed. They’re doing so for a variety of ludicrous reasons, such as being bought the “wrong-coloured iThing” – and the misuse of the term is diluting the perceived seriousness of “real” depression. We know that our use of language, to an extent, colours the way people around us see the world, so it’s an important topic to consider. But in raising this argument, Rhodes himself falls prey to temptation toward hyperbolic language, and leaves a gaping hole wide open in a genuinely problematic way.

The fact is that, like most illnesses, depression has different severities and, like most mental illnesses, is really a convenient catch-all term that describes a spectrum of psychological conditions. Practitioners will diagnose anything from “mild” to “severe” or “clinical” depression, and they use a complex (though not flawless) system to make these diagnoses, based on points accumulated from a survey of symptoms and the length of time those symptoms have been experienced. James Rhodes, meanwhile, asserts that depression should be considered separately from a case of “temporary low mood” that can be treated with talking therapy, citalopram and patience.

This is an odd thing to assert. What Rhodes is saying here is that psychological issues that require fairly significant treatment still aren’t proper depression unless… well, unless what? Unless you feel suicidal? Unless you self-injure? What are the criteria upon which Rhodes feels one should be allowed to “claim to be depressed”?

In his very own introduction, Rhodes loses sight of what becomes the very admirable point of his article: that it is important to listen to those with depression, to understand the condition they live with, and to talk openly and in confidence about an illness that has long been stigmatised. When you have, within the opening three paragraphs, already alienated a range of people with that very condition, there’s a problem. It’s counter to everything he goes onto argue.

The truth is, while it might be important to differentiate between severe and mild depression in terms of treatment, it’s not even slightly relevant to the wider discussion of the topic. People who catch their malignant mole before it starts to spread don’t steal the attention away from those with Stage IV lung cancer. People having a moan about the cold they caught aren’t damaging the world’s attempts to quell the Ebola outbreak. Selecting our language carefully is important, but there is a huge distinction between trivialising a word and using it in a way that feels appropriate to a given situation.

Do you feel like you’re depressed? Use the word. Go nuts. Shout it from the rooftops and help people to understand. People should be able to feel more comfortable talking about the illnesses they live with; in the world of mental health, it’s vital that we move in this direction. Of course it’s not cool to commandeer this sort of language to talk about a minor snafu you’ve had to deal with, just as it’s problematic to talk about how the price of your Sainsbury’s shop “raped” your wallet or whatever. But please, don’t be put off talking about your life because other people’s problems are perceived as worse than yours. These things can grow, and you’d be damn well better off acknowledging them early, before they start to spread.

Not an easy decision. We went back and forth on it a few times. But in the end, it was the only sensible choice.

We came into a crowded market and tried to do something a little different. Ultimately, it didn’t quite work out for us, despite our best efforts. But I’m still immensely proud of what we managed to achieve.

For me personally, editing BeefJack Magazine was one of the defining moments of my career. My first long-term professional contract in games editorial, it gave me the opportunity I was craving to develop my skills as a writer, editor and, later, manager.

I spent two-and-a-half years in this role, and it’s now well over a year since I stepped down as editor of BeefJack Magazine. I was really pleased to see how it continued to grow and develop under Jamie and, later, Yuliya. We produced some incredible, insightful content over the years. We gave budding writers a platform to write to a large audience. Though we were never able to reward those writers in the way we would have liked, I hope each of them got what they were looking for our of the experience. I always tried to invest time in writers, to pick out raw talent and help them develop their skills in specific, targeted, tailored ways. I know Jamie and Yuliya, along with a number of other section editors, had the same goals in mind.

With the closure of Magazine, though, come lots of exciting new opportunities – not just for BeefJack, but for those who contributed to the magazine.

The change comes at a time of change for the whole company, in fact, and for me personally. It’s been kind of the case for a few months now, but next month it becomes more official: my new role at BeefJack is heading up BeefJack Promote, our PR and marketing arm. I want to continue from the groundwork we laid with Magazine, fighting to give interesting and creative games the attention they deserve. We’ve had a great deal of success so far and have worked with some incredible studios on campaigns for phenomenal games.

With a renewed focus on Promote we can invest more time, energy and resources into providing even better and more wide-ranging opportunities for indie and creative studios to thrive. And with Studio, our development arm, we’re making a conscious effort to push new and interesting ideas from our team, to invest time in creating them, and to explore new technologies and implementations to make our ideas shine. This is more the area of our game director, Shaun, but I’m really excited to see where things go.

So, then: sad times, but encouraging times also. I wish everyone involved in BeefJack Magazine the very best of luck, and fully intend to keep working with those people where possible. As for me and Shaun, I think I can speak for both of us when I say we’ll keep nudging BeefJack into the place we want to be: a place that celebrates games of all shapes and sizes, and brings to the fore the imaginations of our phenomenal, creative team.

]]>https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/some-thoughts-on-the-closure-of-beefjack-magazine/feed/0Lewis DenbyWhat Is Wrong With My Knee? – Part 3https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/what-is-wrong-with-my-knee-part-3/
https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/what-is-wrong-with-my-knee-part-3/#respondThu, 09 Jan 2014 15:07:14 +0000http://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/?p=1033Oh heavens, and then I didn’t follow up again for like six months. That’s terrible.

Anyway, basically, after a month or two of waiting, my MRI test results came back completely fine.

My knee still hurt for a while afterwards but gradually, over the months, the pain has gone away entirely.

A mystery, basically. Doctor said knees are funny things. Sometimes they just fuck up for a while for no real reason.

So that is the end of the story. It was really quite easy and stress-free to get it seen to, and even though I was in a lot of pain for a while, turned out to be nothing. Moral of the story: if your knee hurts, request an MRI, it’s probably grand.

]]>https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/what-is-wrong-with-my-knee-part-3/feed/0Lewis DenbyWhat is wrong with my knee? – Part 2https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/what-is-wrong-with-my-knee-part-2/
https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/what-is-wrong-with-my-knee-part-2/#respondThu, 04 Jul 2013 14:36:43 +0000http://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/?p=1019You know, I said I would follow up after I went to the doctor’s about my knee, and then didn’t, which makes me as bad as one of the people I was trying to avoid. That’s terrible! Except not too bad, because I’m following up now.

I went to the doctor’s. After a lengthy wait, involving a very strange medical cartoon on the television, a nice doctor examined me. Good news, probably! He tugged and pushed and bent and twisted my leg, and concluded that he could see no sign of any ligament damage, which is what his initial concern was. He did notice that it was slightly swollen, even after all this time, although this was after a 20-minute walk to the surgery, which may have had something to do with it.

He wasn’t able to tell me what’s wrong, but he did refer me for an MRI scan, which I’ll be attending next week. Possibilities include a small tear of the meniscus, or “something to do with the fluid in your knee,” whatever that means. The good news is he thinks that surgery would be very unlikely to be needed: knees aren’t good things to surgically mess around with, he said, so unless the problem was causing extreme discomfort/disability, a course of physiotherapy and simple lifestyle changes would almost always be the recommendation.

I will follow up after the MRI.

]]>https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/what-is-wrong-with-my-knee-part-2/feed/0Lewis DenbyKhat has been banned. Here’s why this terrifies mehttps://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/khat-has-been-banned-heres-why-this-terrifies-me/
https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/khat-has-been-banned-heres-why-this-terrifies-me/#commentsThu, 04 Jul 2013 08:38:42 +0000http://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/?p=1014I have in front of me a 96-page report, published in January. Here is a quote from page 3, the summary:

The overwhelming majority of Council members consider that khat should not be controlled under the Misuse of Drugs
Act 1971

Yesterday, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced that khat will be banned, saying that the risks of the plant’s consumption “could have been understated.”

Oh, look. Here we go again.

This is not the first time that the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has been ignored. In fact, it often seems that the sole purpose of this group of independent doctors, scientists and sociologists is to prepare lengthy reports on what the Government isn’t going to do. The Council was set up to provide Government decision-makers with the necessary expert input in order to calculate the risk potential of both new and existing recreational substances – but the number of times the Government has now rejected its recommendations borders on the ludicrous.

Since the end of the last Labour government, we’ve seen case after case of such dismissals. The Council’s recommendation that cannabis should remain a Class C substance led to – uh – its reclassification to Class B. Its suggestions outlining why psylocibin mushrooms should not be upped to Class A similarly led to exactly the opposite happening. MDMA should be Class B, it said, while more extensive research into mephedrone should be conducted before a ban is considered. The pills remained Class A and the powder was bumped to Class B before a single piece of research into its risk potential had been conducted.

And, of course, former Council Chair, Professor David Nutt, left the Council after publishing a report that suggested alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than ecstasy and cannabis. Nutt says he was sacked – the Government’s angle was always that he resigned. Either way, this is all starting to look a little bit silly: the experts are repeatedly being told, by the non-experts, that they are wrong, that they have misunderstood, that they have underestimated the harms that these drugs can cause. Trouble is, the non-experts have the final say.

Not only does yesterday’s banning of khat seem ridiculous in light of this rich history of rejected reports, it’s also particularly worrying. Khat is a mild stimulant, a plant whose leaves are often chewed, which induces similar effects to a cup of coffee. From it, you can get things like cathinone, and from there you can get things like mephedrone, much like cocaine is derived from the coca plant and heroin from poppies. But in plant form, it’s not all that bad.

This isn’t the issue. The issue is its widespread use, going back hundreds if not thousands of years, in a number of communities around the world. In Somalian, Ethiopian and Yemeni cultures, it’s been a staple of life for as long as people can remember. Just as we love nothing more than a pint of lager on a Friday night, so these communities indulge in a spot of khat. It is the way things are.

It is believed that khat poses certain health risks, just as anything does in excess. It certainly has the potential for dependence – this has been demonstrated. In rare cases it’s been linked with liver failure, and heart disease, and – in slightly less rare cases – with oral cancers. Its mortality rate is still, in the scheme of things, extraordinarily low: Tobacco and alcohol remain riskier by an enormous degree. But, if we’re honest, it probably isn’t entirely benign.

We don’t ban alcohol and tobacco, and the Government has always shied away from explicitly stating why, but presumably it is because these are historical Western institutions, protected like a religious right, and the prospect of getting rid of them is intimidating. There would be an uproar, outcries, probably rioting. It is acknowledged that these substances are a part of our culture, for better or for worse – so we gently discourage their over-use, while still utilising them to generate huge sums of money for the tax man.

Khat isn’t as popular here. It’s rarely used by British people, who prefer to get their equivalent fix from coffee or Coca-Cola. There is not a mass market for this product, so it can’t be used as a financial buffer, and the number of people who would be incensed by its ban are relatively small in these lands.

But the fact remains that certain communities within our country are now being told that the thing they have done for hundreds if not thousands of years, for generation after generation, is no longer permitted. The worrying effect of all this is that communities that have been using this substance for as long as people can remember, many of whom are addicted to it, are suddenly being robbed of their fix. There has been no mention of any support systems being set up, but May has been quick to point out the risks of the UK being used as a hub for khat trafficking to countries where it is already illegal, its use allegedly – but as yet unprovenly – being used to find terrorism. These are troubling parallels to draw.

And this is happening even though the experts in the AMDC overwhelmingly agreed that it should remain legal. Even though they said there has been no evidence, across decades of research, to suggest that khat poses a significant enough societal or medical risk to become a classified substance. Even though they have suggested integrating with these communities to arrive at mutually agreeable solutions to the problem. Even though they are the experts, advising the law-makers. Nope, say the law-makers. We don’t agree with you. We think you are wrong.

Here’s an idea: maybe they’re not wrong. Maybe, when you get experts in, who year after year tell you that you are doing things incorrectly, you should start to listen. Maybe, when you sack people for disagreeing with you, and their replacements continue to disagree with you, some alarm bells might start to ring.

Or maybe, just maybe, the AMDC functions as a convenient public relations department: a useless filtering system that nevertheless shows that the Government is doing something to understand the real issues behind our substance dependency problems. Look, they spoke to experts! They’re doing things by the book! Except no, they’re not. Because this isn’t how it works at all.

When the Government proposed a Class-A restriction on psylocibin mushrooms, it approached the AMDC with far too little time to produce a full report. According to Nutt, the Government had already made up its mind. Provisionally the Council told the Government that it was very unlikely that they would recommend magic mushrooms should be made Class A. The Government, he alleges, thanked them for their time, then immediately passed legislature that made them among the most illegal things to have on your person.

The AMDC is not a board of experts to be consulted. The AMDC is a board of experts whom the Government hopes will give weight to the decisions they have already made. But, as drug after drug is banned against the Council’s recommendations, to less of an uproar and more of a mild groan, but in ways that could seriously damage certain migrant communities within our proudly multicultural nation, one has to wonder: when will people really sit up and pay attention?

We hope there will be close attention paid to the ACMD‘s further recommendations, which all have our unanimous support. It is essential that communities be supported and given the appropriate resource and environment within which they can manage issues e.g. to support integration and address inequalities of health … Our recommendations are based on a rigorous and systematic process of evidence gathering and subsequent analysis of what was submitted and presented to the ACMD. We would welcome discussing our findings with you.

Khat: A review of its potential harms to the individual and socities within the UK
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, January 2013

]]>https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/khat-has-been-banned-heres-why-this-terrifies-me/feed/10Lewis DenbyWhat is wrong with my knee? – part 1https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/what-is-wrong-with-my-knee-part-1/
https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/what-is-wrong-with-my-knee-part-1/#commentsSun, 02 Jun 2013 09:37:33 +0000http://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/?p=1011All things considered, I have quite the history with knees. I remember, as a child, my dad being in and out of the doctor’s office with persistent knee problems, initially caused by a ligament injury and subsequently aggravated by various things. I remember him in knee braces, in hospital for arthroscopic surgeries, and sprawled out on the ground in our garden after running to answer the phone. My dad’s knee was just something that went wrong in our lives sometimes.

Fast-forward a few years and I remember the first time I injured myself in such a way that the pain lingered for more than a few minutes. Messing around with a friend in PE (I was about 11, I think), I hyperextended my left leg while weight-bearing. Cue two days of being unable to walk. And fast-forward again to being 18, when, while in a nightclub, I slipped on a spilled drink, resulting in a night in A&E with a dislocated patella. This was a particularly nasty one. Six weeks in a full leg splint, about a month more on crutches, and a further two or three months in fairly intensive physiotherapy. It was a time in my life that taught me quite how much we rely on mobile knees. Next time you need the loo (number 2), try going through the whole process without bending your right knee whatsoever.

So, by now I have quite an aversion to the idea of this sort of an injury. Which hasn’t served me so well over the past few weeks, during which time I have come to a dull and miserable acceptance that there’s something wrong with my left knee. It began while on holiday in April, after a week of walking several miles per day on a city break. During a meal on the last evening, my knee began to feel stiff. When I stood up to leave, it really quite hurt. Thinking nothing of it beyond ‘my knee has seized up, I guess this is what reaching your mid-20s feels like,’ I wandered back to the hotel… by which point it was swollen and rather painful. I tried to struggle through the next morning, before heading back to the airport, but it was a struggle. I was limping quite badly. Not good.

But with no indication of what I actually did to my knee, I was unsure how to proceed. I know what the protocol is when you injure yourself. You assess the severity then proceed to the nearest appropriate healthcare centre, if required. But what if a part of you just starts hurting, for no good reason? Presumably you give it a few days to see if it gets better. So I took a couple of days off work, rested and elevated my leg, and it started to improve. Good! Sort of.

Problem was, it only started to improve. That improvement didn’t continue. I spoke to my dad, knee injury specialist of the hour. He mentioned something about my meniscus.

That didn’t sound good. I knew my dad required surgery when he injured his meniscus. Now, I have a ridiculous fear of surgery, probably triggered by the fact that I had approximately eight billion operations by the time I was six seconds old. I spent so much of my childhood in hospitals that I have a serious, deep aversion to the places these days – particularly to the idea of going under the knife. It’s a completely irrational fear, of course: I know that my awareness of the event would stretch no further than a small sting in my arm followed by an hour of being completely unconscious. But still. It’s the sort of thing that makes me worry.

So I decided to book a GP appointment, but because I live in London, I was told the next appointment was a couple of weeks in the future. Instead, I hobbled off to the nearest NHS walk-in centre to get it checked out.

The nurse asked some questions and did some stress tests on my knee – generally picking my leg up and twisting it around and prodding it and saying ‘does that hurt?’ a lot. I described the nature of the pain: a sort of burning sensation behind my patella, offset to the right, that gets worse the more strain I put on it, and is especially bad when I bend or hyperextend the leg. The nurse didn’t seem too worried. No evidence of a serious injury, she said. Try to go easy on it for a few more weeks and it’ll be fine.

And so, several weeks later and still with a dodgy knee, I am now accepting that perhaps this is a thing that needs to be treated. Because I’m a person with the internet, I have of course spent some time searching for all the terrible things that might be wrong and all the dreadful things that may have to happen. The meniscus worry has continued to play on my mind, but I’ve managed to sort of convince myself there’s nothing wrong with that – my knee does click a bit sometimes, but it always has, and so does my other one. Various valgus tests, I think, rule out ligament damage of any real severity. But I do want to find out what’s going on. A wait for the GP is probably the next step.

Patellar-femoral pain syndrome is a thing that apparently exists, and sounds pretty accurate to what I’ve experienced: knee pain that comes on without much reason, and manifests as an ache behind the patella, which gets worse when walking long distances, going up and down stairs, or sitting down for a long time. All of these things are true. But no one really knows much about PFPS, by the looks of it. Barely two doctors can agree on a diagnosis, let along a course of treatment. The most successful way of managing this chronic knee condition seems to be a daily routine of stretches, which doesn’t sound too bad. But I am of course getting ahead of myself, and self-diagnosing like a silly bugger. I’ll just go to the doctor, and take it from there.

BUT! The reason I’ve written this long, rambly blog post about my dreadful knee is because I don’t want to be one of those people on the internet – those dreadful, horrendous people who post about how they have the exact same symptoms as you and are going to the doctor’s tomorrow… and then never, ever post again, disappearing into the ether as soon as they actually have a diagnosis to share. I can only imagine that they either A) are all told they have three minutes to live, or B) enjoy striking fear into the heart of millions of people worldwide when a simple follow-up post to say “oh hey, yeah, I’m fine” would suffice.

So I’m writing this so that, if you come across this blog post in the future and wonder what happened to me, you’ll be able to read the follow-up. And if it’s not there, you know you can email me shouting and demanding to know what the diagnosis was. Hold me to this, basically. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with my knee if it’s the last thing I ever do.

]]>https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/what-is-wrong-with-my-knee-part-1/feed/4Lewis DenbyThe Cat Lady reviewhttps://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/the-cat-lady-review/
https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/the-cat-lady-review/#commentsFri, 29 Mar 2013 08:44:21 +0000http://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/?p=993Haven’t written anything here in a while. Been busy. But when my partner gave me a lovely gift last month (the flu), I finally got around to playing The Cat Lady. So now I write a review, just for funsies.

Unusually in the world of games, The Cat Lady begins with a suicide attempt, and concludes with some general ponderings on the topic of depression. This indie adventure takes great pains to explore the psyche of those on the edge. But despite where its intentions may lie, it’s in between these psychological bookends that the game really shines.

You’re Susan Ashworth, perhaps the only videogame protagonist to have swallowed a fistful of sleeping tablets half an hour before the opening cutscene. Susan has depression, though we’re not really sure why at the start. By the end we have a much clearer picture, but it’s a muddled story, one that never quite seems to grasp the illness it’s discussing, despite an admirable effort. We’re taught, in essence, that there must be a tangible reason for a person being mentally ill, some sort of deep-seated trauma that’s been hidden away for years, and that grates a little bit. The uneven writing doesn’t help.

From Susan’s near-death dream-world, we’re flung back into the land of the living by a strange old woman in a hut, who insists that we kill a series of “parasites.” They aren’t really people, we’re told. They are monsters, who seek only to harm others, and it’s Susan’s job to rid the world of them. Only in death has her life found purpose.

There’s a really intriguing moral tug-of-war going on here, and a heavy implication that there’s more to things than meets the eye. Frequent, tastefully handled scenes of people’s final moments appear each time Susan blows out a candle, which is how she returns to the living world: a reminder, perhaps, of how intrinsically linked life and death truly are.

But back in that living world, the game’s strongest suit is its grizzly revenge story, rather than its musings on morality and mental health. The game’s nasty collage of desaturated images provides a perfectly suited art style, and while the surreal, glitchy character animations might be a result of the budget rather than a creative choice, they give The Cat Lady a persistently unsettling tone.

It’s an aggressive game, with plenty of nods to survival horror, even within its sort-of-point-and-click template. Susan must be the most unfortunate human being on the planet, murderers and rapists targeting her one after the other, and the gruesome methods by which she defends herself and others never stop shocking. The Cat Lady skillfully avoids feeling gratuitous by straying confidently into comicbook territory in its presentation of violence, but there’s always something unnervingly real about these situations, no matter how bizarre the context and how plentiful the blood.

Puzzles are handled with varying success, the early game’s strange, convoluted dreamworld-logic thankfully giving way to more sensible inventory tasks later on. Revelations about Susan’s past form the bulk of the game’s particularly talky middle section, but it’s also here that the real star of the show comes into her own. Susan’s new lodger, Mitzi, provides the real driving force for the story’s second half – and while The Cat Lady has a tendency to meander as the clock ticks on, you’ll keep playing for Mitzi’s rivetingly candid character development.

It’s through gritty atmosphere and unsettling imagery that The Cat Lady really shines, but the game’s climax – involving Mitzi’s own adversary – comes as a refreshing surprise. While I don’t think it handles depression particularly well, it’s still a game with something interesting to say about the assumptions we make of people, and the way our lives interlink. And although my fondest memories of The Cat Lady involve a gas mask and a shotgun, its quieter, more reflective moments left a mark in their own way.

]]>https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/the-cat-lady-review/feed/2Lewis DenbyCat Lady 1Cat Lady 2Cat Lady 3Cat Lady 4On depression, and asking people thingshttps://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/on-depression-and-asking-people-things/
https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/on-depression-and-asking-people-things/#commentsThu, 01 Nov 2012 19:57:24 +0000http://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/?p=958I’ve never tried to kill myself. I’ve suffered from depression and I used to self-harm, but I guess that’s true of a lot of people. I also didn’t know games journalist Matt Hughes, who sadly died this week, even slightly. I barely even recognised the name. I had to check who he wrote for. Seems he was a talented guy, not that that makes a difference.

When people commit suicide, people’s response is generally to gasp at how there were no warning signs, that it doesn’t make sense, that the person always seemed so happy. “He was full of life,” people say. “It’s just so out of character.”

When people kill themselves, they’re not doing so out of character. They do it because they’ve exhausted every other option they can possibly comprehend, and things have become so overwhelming that putting a stop to everything now is the only sensible option, for everyone’s sake.

You could say that the main symptom of depression is a feeling of remarkable sadness, but it’s more than that. It’s a feeling of isolation. A feeling of self-loathing. A sense that you’ll never have the ability to separate yourself from the ills of the world, and as such will never be able to construct a coping mechanism or reason yourself out of a low mood with logic.

And it’s a feeling that you’re all alone in this world; those healthy, happy masses go about their daily lives with barely a stumble, while every single split-second of your own life is a hammer-blow to the head. Those people don’t care. Why should they? If they cared, and let themselves into your mind, they’d be depressed too.

The truth is, nobody really takes the time to think about what goes on in the minds of others. Not really. We all have our own lives to lead, and that’s difficult enough as it is. But I like to think that, as people, as the human race, we do care. Even just a little bit.

I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m mostly okay now, aside from the occasional off-day. I put a lot of that down to my re-discovery of writing, and my decision to apply myself to a goal. But I also put a lot of it down to the fact that I had people who really took the time to understand how I was feeling.

When was the last time you asked somebody if they were okay and really meant it? We say it trivially every time we meet someone, and the correct response is, “I’m fine, thanks. How are you?” You must not deviate from the script. To do so is social suicide. If you’ll excuse the metaphor.

But really, we’re all human, and we all get sad sometimes, and we all ultimately care when we find out that other people are suffering. So the next time you see your friend, ask them if they’re okay. Really ask it, and push them for a real answer. They’re probably fine. But it might just turn out that your friend needs an ear, and they’ll be grateful for that question for the rest of their life.

And if they think you’re being weird, or take the mick out of you, then they’re a cunt.

]]>https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/on-depression-and-asking-people-things/feed/3Lewis DenbyIndie developers: How to get your game in the press – part 2https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/indie-developers-how-to-get-your-game-in-the-press-part-2/
https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/indie-developers-how-to-get-your-game-in-the-press-part-2/#respondWed, 01 Aug 2012 11:26:38 +0000http://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/?p=945Ages and ages ago I wrote a slightly angry rant masquerading as ten tips to indie developers to help get press coverage. Basically, I tend to write these things after being insufferably annoyed by something that makes it literally impossible for me to write about a game I think looks interesting. This time it’s a combination of that, and one that actually impressed me.

So now, I’m thinking everything can be condensed down into one crucial piece of information that it’s handy to remember when trying to get your indie game some press coverage:

Journalists are really busy, and sometimes a bit lazy.

‘Lazy’ is clearly shorthand here for ‘need to take a few shortcuts because oh god deadlines‘, but from the indie dev’s perspective it’s the same thing. And what this means is that it’s crucial to help us as much as possible, every step of the way.

This means the usual things, like:

– Have a website

– Have an email address on this website (no, this doesn’t mean a contact form, or a mailto: thing that opens a client when I click on it, or just a fucking Steam username as I recently came across

– Make sure you regularly check this email account, and respond promptly

But it also means getting into the headspace of a journalist, and really considering the following question: Why would I want to write about your game?

My job isn’t to get indie games loads of coverage. My job is to make sure my readers are kept abreast with all the stuff they’re interested in. So what you need to do is convince me that my readers are going to be interested in your game. Here are some tips.

– If it’s basically a carbon copy of a popular iOS game, only not as good, you’ve hit a dead end before you start. That isn’t interesting. Be honest with yourself about this. It might make you some good money, and that’s fine, there’s a market for that. But the specialist press isn’t the way to go about your marketing campaign. Think of something else.

– “Indie game no one’s heard of releases screenshots” is not a news story. Hundreds of indie games no one’s heard of release screenshots every day. Maybe one or two of those will get picked up by the press, if they’re lucky. To be one of those two, you need a better story than that.

– If your game is genuinely, truly unique, then you’ll have no problem getting coverage. If you are having problems, it means your game isn’t unique at all. This is not a bad thing from a journalist’s perspective. In fact, it makes the game incredibly easy to cover. If your game is “a cross between popular game X and popular game Y”, you’ve just written my headline for me.

– Congratulations! You’ve got a journalist interested and they’ve sent through some questions via email for you to answer. So for goodness’ sake, answer them now and answer them well. A few one-sentence answers that tell me nothing about the game, emailed through a week after the fact, will end up rotting in my inbox. Give me some quotes, and give them to me while I’m obviously interested in your game.

Recently, an indie developer absolutely nailed it, and I’d like to use them as a standout example. I’d tweeted that BeefJack was looking to feature some interesting indie games on the site. Now, I know that a lot of indie developers follow me on Twitter, so it surprised me that only two emails came through, but never mind that. Within ten minutes, I had an email from an indie developer. And here’s what was in it.

– A collection of high-res screenshots

– A link to a playable build

– Some very quotable accompanying text

– A description, which included several popular examples of games it was similar to

Which is fantastic! A prompt response, some attention-grabbing text, some images I can use, and you even let me play it! I wrote about the game immediately. My article ended up on the front page of /r/games on Reddit for about 24 hours, where people discussed how interesting it looked.

Because it was interesting. Not especially unique, nor beautiful to look at, but it had a hook, which its devs communicated with me brilliantly. This is how to sell your indie game – it costs nothing, takes little time, and allows for widespread chatter about the thing you’re working on. Why anyone doesn’t do this is beyond me. Stop being ridiculous, and start doing it now.

]]>https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/indie-developers-how-to-get-your-game-in-the-press-part-2/feed/0Lewis DenbyThe Guardian’s huge drug survey is extraordinaryhttps://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/the-guardians-huge-drug-survey-is-extraordinary/
https://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/the-guardians-huge-drug-survey-is-extraordinary/#respondFri, 16 Mar 2012 01:22:25 +0000http://lewisdenby.wordpress.com/?p=930The Guardian and Mixmag have done something quite incredible: a survey about drug use, conducted on an absolutely enormous scale, that gives phenomenal insight into the reasons people take drugs, and those people’s thoughts about their substance intake.

The spectacular range of results have been recorded in a smart, measured and balanced fashion all over The Guardian’s website, and will presumably be featured heavily in the paper tomorrow.

It’s quite an astonishing set of articles to read. There are some frightening findings, and some comforting ones. Quite predictably, it turns out there are some people who take drugs in moderation and with knowledge, and are fine, and there are others who don’t, and aren’t. The crucial thing is that this isn’t just hearsay any more.

Of course, it isn’t all-encompassing. The survey invited only drug users to give their thoughts, not the majority of the population who abstain. The Guardian’s also keen to note the demographic who signed up to the survey: generally white, middle-class and educated. There are a lot of drug users who do not fit this bill, and it’s important not to ignore those people – the homeless heroin addicts, or those who’ve turned to a life of crime to fund their cocaine habits.

But the range of results here is hugely important, and the insight it provides should – if taken seriously – help those in power begin to combat the world’s devastating drug-related problems.

The take-home findings:

– Not all people who take drugs end up in trouble with them. Some do, and that’s a problem. But most of those surveyed (and it’s important to remember that the survey isn’t all-encompassing) were found to live healthy, happy lives, during which they spend the majority of their existence doing things like working or studying, instead of taking drugs.

– Users of multiple drugs strongly tend to worry more about their alcohol or tobacco habits than their use of illegal substances.

– Drug users do not want to put themselves or others in danger. They want honest, reliable advice about the risks involved in their drug use, and if they discovered that they really were putting themselves in danger, most would stop. Generally, drug users do not trust government-funded resources such as FRANK, because they are demonstrably unreliable in their information. People want more evidence, and they want those providing it to show their working.

– The more drugs the government criminalises, the more people turn to unknown ‘mystery powders’ – substances that could be anything, of any toxicity, of any level of danger – to get their kicks.

– An increasing number of people are turning to prescription medications, obtained by shady means, to help them through the negative side-effects of illegal drugs. This is a hugely serious, and terrifyingly unreported, problem.

There’s more. Far more. The extent of this research, while purely anecdotal, is quite remarkable. And it has hugely important connotations for those with the power to take action, because it is quite clear: people don’t want to get messed up on drugs. They just don’t trust the people who tell them this will happen.